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Food & Water Watch provided skilled activists to help us organize and amplify our voices against fracking in Monterey County, California. Their presence brought added credibility and effectiveness in educating and activating local residents to preserve our precious agriculture and water resources. Food & Water Watch understands that on-the-ground grassroots organizing is essential to success.

Frac sand is an essential component in the fracking process; it is combined with large quantities of water and toxic chemicals, which are injected underground at high pressure to crack dense rock and release oil and gas.

Coloradans are increasingly aware of the problems that accompany drilling and fracking for oil and natural gas. Communities are working to ban the practice and, of course, the oil and gas industry is fighting back. But the industry’s primary argument – that fracking drives economic growth and prosperity in the state – just doesn’t add up.

The potential for widespread hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” threatens New York’s abundance of farmers markets, community-supported agriculture, and locally grown produce and food products. Fracking is a process that the oil and gas industry uses to extract natural gas and oil from shale rock formations buried deep within the Earth. It requires large quantities of water mixed with sand and toxic chemicals, which are injected underground at high pressure to crack dense rock and release oil and gas.

Despite the alarming water crisis the world is facing, private interests are polluting, exploiting and selling water — a resource essential for all life. A 2009 publication, sponsored by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and several for-profit multinational companies, predicted that by 2030 global freshwater demand would exceed available supplies by 40 percent. In addition to the increasing pollution and overuse of the available freshwater supply, climate change will exacerbate water shortages worldwide. In fact, a UN-Water report said, “…climate change is expected to account for about 20 percent of the global increase in water scarcity.”

New drilling and fracking techniques have made it possible to extract oil and natural gas from shale and other dense rock formations that were previously inaccessible. While such drilling and fracking has been a boon for the oil and gas industry in the United States, it has been a nightmare for Americans exposed to the pollution that accompanies shale development. The expansion of modern drilling and fracking across the country has caused widespread environmental and public health problems and created serious, long- term risks to underground water resources, all of which affect farming and our food.

From the Sacramento Valley to Los Angeles County, the oil and gas industry has been fracking in California without clear regulatory oversight for many years. Now, the next generation of drilling and fracking involving much more fluid and chemicals injected at much higher pressure, and creating much more waste, pollution and risk — has arrived on the West Coast.

Gas drillers use a water-intensive process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to extract natural gas from shale. The process injects millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, under high pressure to crack the rock formation to release natural gas. Private water players can make money on both ends by selling water to drillers and then treating the wastewater.

Food &Water Watch champions healthy food and clean water for all. We stand up to corporations that put profits before people, and advocate for a democracy that improves people's lives and protects our environment.